CTA Tattler

So, anyone care to comment on the CTA Red line train derailment at the Cermack station over the weekend?

I hope KevinB goes so the planter lobbyists don't get their way!

I know you've heard me whine(according to the hubie fanboys) before about this subject (specifically the Sedgewick station), but when did all the aesthetic considerations like artwork and flowers override the functional part of design?

I was riding the 152 Addison and we pulled up to the Brownline station at Addison and Lincoln.

Because of the location and closeness of the planters on either side of the metal supports at the curb, there is not enough room to get off the bus if it pulls up anywhere near the curb, especially the back door exit....Does no one think about this sort of stuff when putting these "nice to haves". I'm all for art and planters and green and flowers, but make a place for people to get off the freakin bus why don't ya?

I guess we could just have the drivers stop traffic by staying out in the road so that people have room to exit..that sure makes alot of sense. Also helps with the ADA aspects...

I mean, I'm the guy who based his condo decision on the 800sq ft terrace I'm getting so that I could do lots of plants and things to reduce my carbon footprint....

KevinB

I actually am thinking about going tonight.

I'll be wearing my hemp sports jacket and my vegan sandals and no underwear (free range, baby!)!

KevinB

I'm up to comment on the huge fail of the new Google Map-based tracker. Here's how it looks in Firefox on my PC:

http://img162.imageshack.us/img162/3636/trackermapji7.jpg

All of the controls are transparent and the visible area is much smaller than the original. There's a huge amount of wasted white space around the top and bottom, though. And sure enough, the "route progress" windows seem to have vanished, so when we riders see mothing more than "No arrival times for this stop" on the Arrivals display, we can't see where the buses are at a glance. I think the problems can be fixed, but they shouldn't have happened.

Hmm, the new Google Maps Bus Tracker looks just fine in Firefox for me, but just poking around there are a few quirks... like a bus apparently located at Halsted/Jackson saying it is "approaching" Halsted Cermak and "3 MIN" from Halsted Orange Line.

I tried Bus Tracker this morning on Firefox, it was working great and didn't look anything like the sample. I even loaded it up with 10 routes , zoomed in and out, the whole bit, and it was working great. One thing I don't "like" about it are the bus routes in yellow and gray. Yellow appears transparent on Google's yellow major arteries, and too many shades of gray when buses are on minor arteries. Also, Route 12 and 38(in Gray) look like they cross each other at Taylor and Ogden instead of both routes turning there.

Hey KevB, maybe they put all that stuff in the way to keep people from plowing their cars into the station. Much the way the Hancock Tower sidewalks are filled with large concrete planters now instead of the Jersey barricades that went up right after 9-11.

I can understand poles to keep that from happening, but it makes it almost impossible to walk more than 1 person at a time and you'd have to line the bus up perfectly even to open up the back bus door if you are near the curb.... Are there many pedestrians plowing into the stations? Are they afraid if they get a good running start they might damage the station?

Doesn't make alot of sense any way you look at it...

KevinB

It really doesn't what what anyone tells the CTA about the art, it will be ugly!
All public "art" of the last 50 years has been ugly as sin!

The absolute worst location for those concrete barriers are the ones put in by Union Station a few months back. At rush hour its a huge mass of people trying to get through the three or four single-person-wide slots in the direction of rush hour. If you are trying to go into or out of Union Station via the Jackson or Adams doors at the concourse AGAINST rush hour its pure HELL! I'd like to know the idiots that decided this was necessary. I'm sure its Amtrak since they own Union Station and don't give a darn if Metra commuters suffer. They are soooo worried about terrorist bomb situations going INTO the station or buildings above it. But has anyone considered what would happen if there was any type of major emergency in the station at rush hour, such as a fire and everyone needed to get out quickly? People would rushing away from the station and just would take a few people to fall right by those barriers and get trampled. Stupid stupid stupid!

UC-C, you think the Bean is ugly?

Cheryl--even if UC-C doesn't think so, I certainly do!! I really don't like any of the art I've seen in Millenium Park. The Bean, the face/fountains...and that icewall this winter was just ridiculous.

I don't know if I'd go so far as to say all public art from the last 50 years is that bad, however.

Oh darn! I deleted some of my routes from bus tracker(where my 10 chosen routes were still working), and now I'm limited to 5 routes. Earlier today, the maximum was listed at 10 routes. Oh well, I guess it's working as advertised.

Continuing off-topic... yeah, Millennium Park is like an art amusement park to me. Like a guy with a lot of money goes to a gallery and says, "Yeah, I got a new house and I need to fill it up with some art. Gimmie one of those, one of those, one of those, two those and you got that one in blue?" Like they just put some stuff together without any cohesive concept.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled topic...

The Bean isn't art, it's a large manufactured piece of welded & polished stainless steel.
That said, I find it interesting, but it still ain't pretty.

And the CTA will undoubtedly put up crap like they did at Kimball.
Or for worse, go see the alleged art in front of the Rogers Park Police Station. It's just a jumble of Cor-Ten steel scrap welded together.
A pile of the old streetcar rails pulled up from the Devon Carhouse that previously occupied the site would have been better looking.
Or even better, find the old cast iron fountain that was in front of the original Rogers Park Police Station at Estes & Clark.
It has a stream for people & bowls of water for both horses & dogs.
It was there for several years after the building was torn down.

The Bean is great! I suppose that off-center Picasso in front of the Daley Center is just a weird, ugly piece of rusty metal?

You guys hate everything!

The Picasso is not off-center. I actually think it's quite miraculous, especially after I discovered how to look at it. And it's basically isolated status gives you the opportunity to appreciate it more. Not some crammed together collection of "artstuff" at Millennium Park.

Boy, this board has been hijacked, huh?

As suspected, now that the Halsted 8 is on Bustracker, the route is suffering from MAJOR bus bunching and gaps! Big surprise! Right now, next Northbound bus at Halsted/Diversey is 25 minutes. The nearest Northbound bus is up at Addison. So that makes it at least 35 minutes between buses Northbound on Halsted right now. Southbound there are THREE operating within 3-4 blocks of each other, then about a 15-20 min gap being created right now behind them. I watched ALL THREE leave the Halsted Waveland terminal at the same time. I would love to hear an explanation why THREE buses left terminal at same time and now it appears that is going to cause about a 20 min gap behind them very shortly. UNREAL. I just hope the CTA uses all this expensive technology to stop this nonsense.

As suspected, now that the Halsted 8 is on Bustracker, the route is suffering from MAJOR bus bunching and gaps! Big surprise! Right now, next Northbound bus at Halsted/Diversey is 25 minutes. The nearest Northbound bus is up at Addison. So that makes it at least 35 minutes between buses Northbound on Halsted right now. Southbound there are THREE operating within 3-4 blocks of each other, then about a 15-20 min gap being created right now behind them. I watched ALL THREE leave the Halsted Waveland terminal at the same time. I would love to hear an explanation why THREE buses left terminal at same time and now it appears that is going to cause about a 20 min gap behind them very shortly. UNREAL. I just hope the CTA uses all this expensive technology to stop this nonsense.

[The Bean isn't art, it's a large manufactured piece of welded & polished stainless steel.]

So why is it not art? The fact that you find it "interesting" makes it art, doesn't it?

I'm not thrilled with most of the stuff in Millennium Park, but I like the Bean. And the Picasso--it makes a great slide, you know. And I like the art at my Brown Line stop.

I've gotta agree with Cheryl that the artwork (mosaic tile on the entry ramp) at Francisco on the Brown Line is beautiful.

>>>
I would love to hear an explanation why THREE buses left terminal at same time
<<<

First two left late. Third left on-time.

Question: Did they arrive together, too? If not, how far apart did they arrive?

Based on safety rules, did any (all? some?) of the drivers have a required break? Did any of them exceed the required break time?

What I'm getting at is if the first and second buses arrived late, and the drivers were required by safety regulations to leave late, focusing on their departure times is looking at a symptom, and not a cause.

Perhaps they should have been short-turned on their northbound trip so they could get their breaks in, and then be in place for the southbound run, even if that means they miss the north end of the route.

Here's some more questions: What's happening northbound? Why is there another problem forming?

I suspect that part of the problem is there aren't realistic schedules, and it sounds like some more buses will arrive at Waveland late. And if they have required breaks, they'll also leave late.

If the street is so consistantly unpredictable (there's an oxymoron for you), then it's irresponsible to tighten the recovery time at the terminal to the point that multiple buses in short periods of time have to leave late because there's not enough slack to account for both their required break, and a typical delay in arrival.

And yes, the technology should help. It will allow the people in charge to see a visual representation of what's actually happening, rather than dealing with some abstract numbers about what percentage of buses are less than a minute behind their leaders.

Now here's another question: Do they still staff an abnormal percentage of the runs on the 8 off the extra board? Or did moving it to another garage change the length of the runs so more full-time, regular drivers could be used? A driver who's running the same run every day is going to have a better sense of when to push, and when not to push between time points. Extra board drivers don't know what assumptions were made by the scheduling department, or how that looks in real life, so they can't make those micro-adjustments that a regular could make. And we all (ought to know) that a one second delay can easily result in an extra 60 seconds at a red light, so those micro-adjustments aren't as unimportant as some folks sitting in an air conditioned, windowless office might think.

For me, the Bean isn't art because it doesn't say anything. It isn't a comment; it isn't an observation; it isn't a person's filtered, individual view on our condition, philosophies, or actions. The word "art" is horribly overused today.

The Bean is craft, solidly in the kitsch genre. It's well designed and wonderfully executed, but it's craft, not art.

Geeze, Bob. Next thing you're going to tell us that the clip art that comes with Microsoft Office isn't really art!

;)

[For me, the Bean isn't art because it doesn't say anything. It isn't a comment; it isn't an observation; it isn't a person's filtered, individual view on our condition, philosophies, or actions. The word "art" is horribly overused today.]

Um, that's crazy.

First of all, just because it doesn't say something *to you* doesn't mean that it doesn't say anything. I'm sure lots of people have found some sort of personal meaning in it. I myself think it's profound in a way, but I'm no good at explaining these things.

Secondly, that's just a made-up and extremely reductive definition of art. Craft *is* art when it moves beyond the strictly functional and becomes an aethetic endeavor.

And third, if anything, "art" is a very underused word. Most people don't think of art as anything but an oil painting or sculpture - head over to the Art Institute on any given day and you can overhear people wondering why pieces of furniture or old pots are in an art gallery.

Then again, I'm guessing that you're one of those people.

[...becomes an aethetic endeavor.]

I hope it's clear, but I meant 'aesthetic'. My apologies.

Sorry, strannix; it's true that I'm skeptical of a lot of modern art, but that doesn't mean you don't judge too quickly too. (Fun Bob S. Fact: Last year a Michigan Ave. gallery owner proposed to include some of my work in a show he was preparing to curate. Unfortunately, as the economy changed, said gallery owner's circumstances did too.) And in my own collecting I'm particularly a patron of the sort of work one finds at SOFA each fall. But unless we claim that the reflections of buses in the Bean were the original Tracker, we're far afield from the topic; I'll leave my reply as that I think merely being placed in a museum, gallery, or show does not make something Art, and that there's plenty of honorable room for beauty in Craft.